Tag Archives: Thief Fix

One of the great things about B/X and (by extension) ACKS, is its simplicity. So many of the elements of the system show off this simplicity that it’s really a shining point if you are looking for a game that plays fast and quick.

But simplifying everything does, occasionally, leave some things to be desired.

One area where I personally don’t appreciate the simplicity is in grading the ‘Special’ experience bonus. To say that a creature’s ability to Energy Drain a target is worth the same bonus experience as another creature’s ability to fly is disingenuous I believe. In the Advanced versions of the game, this was ‘fixed’ in a variety of ways. Based on my own experience, I’m going to incorporate a bit of that in ‘grading’ how much my monsters should be worth. Yes, this means that pcs will get a bit more experience for defeating a monster, but when a creature has an ability that can permanently destroy a character with a lucky roll…I’m okay with that. When you consider that this means a wight would be worth a whopping 30 xp more, versus its ability to steal a level…yeah, no problem here.

Ok, so that quick and dirty skill system kept coming up in my mind and I realized that maybe I could pick out the proficiencies that would need to be ‘fixed’ to work with the system. Let’s see how that goes.

As I previously mentioned, there are a plethora of ways to ‘fix’ thieves (beyond leaving them out of the game entirely). This originally started as another means of ‘fixing’ thieves, and not one I came up with on my own either (see below). However, the idea stuck with me so long that I couldn’t NOT do something with it. I know a lot of people hate skill systems with a passion, and I get that. Equally, I’ve played with a lot of players that feel hamstrung by characters without some crunch ‘meat’ on their bones. Take this as you will. Personally I could use something like this quite easily.

As I previously mentioned, there are a plethora of ways to ‘fix’ thieves (beyond leaving them out of the game entirely). So I’ll show case a few, some from other versions of the game, and others from Bloggers or my own ideas.

As I previously mentioned, there are a plethora of ways to ‘fix’ thieves (beyond leaving them out of the game entirely). So I’ll show case a few, some from other versions of the game, and others from Bloggers or my own ideas.Continue reading →

As I previously mentioned, there are a plethora of ways to ‘fix’ thieves (beyond leaving them out of the game entirely). So I’ll show case a few, some from other versions of the game, and others from Bloggers or my own ideas.